Free Blackbird by Larry Duplechan

know,” she said. “What I told you yesterday was because I wanted to tell you what I’m about to tell you now, and I didn’t want to do it pretending to be Carolann.”
    “Huh?”
    “Never mind,” she said, and she reached into her purse (this enormous old macramé monstrosity that she had no doubt made herself – I’ve made better ones myself) and pulled out a deck of cards.
    “Here,” she said, handing me the deck. “Shuffle these.”
    “This is what you had to tell me? That you’re heavily into pinochle?” “You’re really nervous,” she said. “You always joke when you’re nervous, don’t you?” Matter of fact, I do. I shuffled the cards.
    “Okay,” I said. “So I’ve shuffled the cards. So what?”
    “The top card is the jack of diamonds,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Jack of diamonds,” she repeated. “Turn it over.” I did. And it was.
    “Three of spades,” she said. Right again.
    And again. And again. And again.
    I believe she missed two out of the fifty-two.
    “I don’t suppose this is some clever illusion,” I said. I knew it wasn’t.
    “Nope.”
    “You’re psychic.”
    “Uh-huh.” She took the cards from me and began to shuffle them. “Wanna see me do it again? I usually get them all.”
    “No, that’s okay. I’m sure you’d get it this time. You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
    She smiled.
    “Is that it?” I asked her. “Just the card thing?”
    “Oh, no,” she said. “I know when the phone’s gonna ring before it does; I know when somebody’s gonna come over, even if they haven’t said so. That sort of thing. I’m slightly psychokinetic: I can move things, small things, nothing heavy and not very far. A couple of years ago, though, I had what they used to call poltergeist. Things used to fly around my room – dolls, teddy bears, perfume bottles. I couldn’t control it.”
    “Do you read minds? Like do you know what I’m thinking?”
    “Not really read minds. I mean, not word for word, like a textbook or something. But I can usually sense the general gist – like right now you’re not sure whether or not you believe me.” She was right about that.
    “Do you know if I got a part in the show?”
    She laughed.
    “No. I can’t see the future. I don’t have a crystal ball, either.”
    “Have you done this – had this – all your life?”
    “As far as I can remember.”
    “What about Carolann?”
    “She doesn’t have any psychic powers to speak of, as far as we can tell.”
    “Look, Crystal, it’s not like this isn’t interesting and all, because it is. But I’m still not sure why you’re letting me in on all this.”
    “Well, like I said yesterday, I wanted to tell somebody. Some days
    I feel like I’m gonna burst if I don’t tell somebody. And you know what I mean.”
    I felt a funny little quiver when she said that. Like she knew something.
    “And,” she continued, “I had a feeling you could deal with it.
    Besides, I think you might have it, too.” She finished with a little nod of her head.
    “Who, me?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “What makes you think that?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, “it’s just a feeling. Listen: don’t you sometimes feel like you know just what a person’s really feeling, even if they’re saying something else?”
    “Well, sure, but –”
    “And I bet you have really strong hunches, like intuition. Like you have a feeling about something, and later you find out you were right. Right?”
    “Right.”
    “See, I can tell you’re a very sensitive person. And that’s all ESP really is; it’s just heightened sensitivity. And you’re a lot more sensitive than most guys. Than most girls, even. Maybe it has something to do with your being gay.”
    I swear, my heart stopped for a second. I looked around the bus really fast, wondering if anybody had heard her.
    “God bless it! Who told you that?” I couldn’t believe Cherie would have told anybody, and Skipper had sworn he